Browner: GOP-EPA fight replay of '95

Former White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner says the GOP fight against environmental regulations is a rerun from the 1990s.

Browner was the EPA administrator during the Clinton administration and recalled her days fighting then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and the GOP majority after 1995.

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"I once ran the EPA and I've seen this movie before," Browner said at POLITICO's Energy and the Presidency event Wednesday morning. "You know what the American people said? They said, 'Hold on a second. We want a cop on the beat. We want clean air. We want clean water.'"

Browner said President Barack Obama is perfectly positioned against Republicans on green issues. "This is a good issue for the president because Americans are not going to go to the polls and vote for dirty air and dirty water," she said.

Browner, now at the Center for American Progress and the Albright Stonebridge Group, accused House Republicans of hiding the environmental debate in riders on the Interior-EPA spending bill currently on the floor.

"What I would say to the members of Congress, if you want to change the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, is let's go to the floor and have that debate," Browner said.

Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming replied by saying "anytime." "The American people are concerned about 9.2 percent unemployment," Barrasso said. Meanwhile, he added, the EPA "is fixated on removing any remotely small environmental risk."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 8:53 a.m. on July 27, 2011.